Delaware's 'House of Cards' connections

Kevin Spacey and Reed Birney in a scene from Netflix’s “House of Cards.”(Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon)

If you look past the Machiavellian backstabbing, Kevin Spacey's Southern accent and the dark political drama that makes Netflix's "House of Cards," Delawareans just might spot a couple of familiar faces.

Seaford native Reed Birney plays Rep. Donald Blythe and in the show's second season, which was released in its entirety Valentine's Day, he goes toe-to-toe with Spacey in one of the program's most emotionally-charged scenes.

In another episode, retired Amtrak conductor and Wilmington resident Lee Murphy plays the U.S. Secretary of Defense and finds himself sitting beside the fictitious president in a cabinet meeting, across the table from Spacey, who plays the unscrupulous vice president.

For both, being involved in the critically-acclaimed and binge-worthy series opposite the two-time Academy Award winner Spacey was a career highlight. (President Obama is even a fan, tweeting last week to remind everyone that the show's second season was being released.)

"It was thrilling for me. It was really like a one-act play," says Birney, 59, a longtime actor now living in New York. "When I read it for the first time, I could not believe that I get to do this. If I had sat down and wrote a 'for your consideration' episode for myself, I could never had written anything better than that."

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The cover of The News Journal's 55 Hours for Feb. 21.(Photo: The News Journal)

Birney, brother of veteran Delaware honky tonk musician Scott Birney of The Sin City Band, is currently in New York's Catskill Mountains preparing for the lead in "Casa Valentina" on Broadway.

It's Harvey Fierstein's first play in nearly 30 years, following up on last year's success of his Broadway musical, "Kinky Boots."

For Birney, who was raised in Wilmington for part of his childhood and went to Mount Pleasant Junior High School, it's another high-profile step in his hard-fought 40-year career.

That up-and-down career was profiled in a generous spread in the Sunday New York Times last year, tied to the off-Broadway production of "Picnic" that he was starring in at the time.

In the article, Birney opened up about the low points in his career, which have included off-Broadway work and numerous low-profile parts on television shows like "Law and Order" and "Gossip Girl."

"I had decades of despair while I was waiting for something to happen," he told the newspaper. "There was a lot of crying, and I came to recognize how to play heartbreak and disappointment."

A year later, Birney still marvels at the attention and the positive impact it's had on his late-blooming career.

"It was a fantasy come true because I had spent decades reading the Art and Leisure section of the Times feeling like, 'When am I ever going to get in this thing?'" he says. "I'll tell you – it has made me relax in an enormous way.

"For the paper of record to spend that kind of ink on me – I can't imagine winning an Academy Award being any more acknowledging or confirming."

After all, he was broke only about 10 years ago and took a job stuffing envelopes at the ticket fulfillment office of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. "It was, as you can imagine, a fairly dark period," he says flatly.

Lee Murphy (right) in the second season of “House of Cards.”(Photo: Netflix)

His showcase scene with Spacey – directed by James Foley ("Glengarry Glen Ross") – took four full days to shoot with the pair acting alone. In it, you can find plenty of that aforementioned heartbreak and disappointment.

The scene pairs Rep. Blythe and Vice President Frank Underwood under lockdown in Underwood's office during an anthrax scare. It is then that Blythe opens up about his wife's Alzheimer's disease.

While we watch Blythe unfurl his heart while sipping alcohol given to him by Underwood, we know the vice president's true intentions. In one of Spacey's breaking-the-fourth-wall moments, he looks into the camera tells the viewers, "I should have thought of this before. Appeal to the heart, not the brain." (It's nowhere near Underwood's darkest moments. In the first season, he murders a congressman.)

After Underwood offers additional Alzheimer's disease research funding to get Blythe on his side for a big entitlement bill, Blythe realizes he is being manipulated. His wife's illness is being used – cold and calculatingly – by a ruthless politician.

"I see what you're doing. You're disgusting, Frank. Using my wife!" Blythe snaps at the moment he realizes Underwood's underhandedness.

As you watch Spacey and Birney duke it out in the scene, you understand why the show was nominated for nine Emmy Awards last year, winning three. It was the first program to earn Primetime Emmy Award nominations for original, online-only television. (Spacey lost the best actor award to Jeff Daniels of HBO's "The Newsroom.")

There is plenty of love for Netflix in the Birney family these days. His wife, Constance Shulman, plays imprisoned yoga instructor Yoga Jones on another Netflix drama, "Orange Is the New Black." "We are very indebted to Netflix in our house," Birney says.

For Murphy, 62, traveling to Baltimore and working across from Spacey in a life-like re-creation of The White House was simply a thrill – especially this version of Spacey.

As Underwood, Spacey at one point tells viewers, "There are two types of vice presidents: doormats and matadors," leaving little question about which he is.

"Spacey is the last one to come into the room and when he does, the room takes on a whole different aura," says Murphy, who grew up in Penns Grove, N.J., before moving to Delaware in the '70s. "It was a real treat. And it definitely bolsters your confidence going forward."

Even with a smaller role than Birney, working on the political drama was a perfect fit for Murphy.

As a Republican, he has run for public office in Delaware multiple times – once in 1984 for New Castle County Council and twice for the state senate, losing to Sen. Harris McDowell.

"Politics is a kind of game, maybe not to the extreme of 'House of Cards' on the state level," says Murphy, who has been acting for 25 years in everything from commercials to television shows like "Homicide: Life on the Street."

"At least they get things done on 'House of Cards.'"

A third season of "House of Cards" has already been ordered, and it is expected to begin filming this spring.

For now, both Birney and Murphy will be waiting by their phones to see if their characters will reappear in the series.

Both want to return, even if it means their characters could be stabbed in the back – literally or figuratively.

IF YOU WATCH

The second season of Netflix's "House of Cards" starring Kevin Spacey debuted on Valentine's Day. The entire first two seasons of the political drama are currently available on Netflix.